I started going to a mma gym, mostly just to socialize and hang out. I was rolling around with the jiujitsu and judo students and all of them were astounded over how hard it was to take me down. Is that something that just happens from karate training or what?

I found in Judo I was good at rooting myself and being harder to throw..but an experienced Judoka won't have any trouble with that anyway because they will trick you out of your posture. IN actual randori you will not be able to posture up because with a good throw, you won't feel it coming.

You learn very good, stable body shapes in decent Karate training, but if you want to learn to specifically defend throws and whatnot..you need to just do another art, prolonged grappling engagement and takedown defense is not really a mainstay of Karate. You need to get some grappling under your belt if you want to understand how to 'defend' it..or better yet crosstrain with those guys. There is no panacea art or system that will teach you to do everything.

If you were just practicing static throws and fooling around, they were probably just noticing you were a stiff uke, rather than noticing you were actually hard to take down.

Throws and much of grappling work with the force of the body..people from striking arts often make really bad ukes at first for just practicing technique due to the fact that they are conditioned to move against the body, which is what strikes etc. do. Unless you were actually doing randori, it's hard to say whether you are actually hard to throw. Go ahead and do randori with one of them, try it and report back!

Agree with Matt and Zach. That you are "hard to take down" makes you an exception rather than a rule IME. Anyone who hasn't trained any sort of grappling art is usually going to be very easy to take down. There are sports like Rugby and American Football that may help you out a bit though. Certain karate styles I've seen may help you with posture, and having good posture makes it harder for someone to take you down. That said even good static posture goes to the dogs once you start moving around in grappling sparring.

Like Zach says, if you were drilling throws and trying to "root", you'll be hard to throw/take down. If you are acutally sparring full out and are inexperienced in grappling, you'll present quite a few chances for your opponent to take you down.

The only other thing I know that may make it slightly harder is if you are much larger/stronger than your opponent.

Certainly those sorts of drills will help if you are being pushed around. Judo is as much of a pulling game as it is a pushing game though. If you're not use to being pulled out of position, you'll be in trouble. IMO it is even harder to maintain posture in a gi because of all the handles the gi provides.

In terms of getting your back on the ground, what position where you in before they got your back? Where you on your back facing up? Did the instructor have you in the mount?

If you have a friend and are sensible there are a TON of instructional videos about how to survive on the ground and escape positions. I was listening to an interview the first BJJ black belt in Ireland gave. He was asked about what new students should expect. He said that no matter what your goal in BJJ was, as a newbie you're going to spend the first few months getting tapped. By proxy, you're going to be learning how to survive in various positions in the first few months. Try and learn about how to escape and defend various positions on the ground for your first few months.

The instructor got me in a sacrifice throw. He was barely pulling me and it was so gentle that I didn't realize I should do anything until I was on the ground. I got up face facing the floor with my hands in front of me. He wasn't in my sight. He went around and pulled me into a rear mount and got me in a rear naked choke.

He kept repeating that same tactic 2 more times because I couldn't defend against it. I went home to clear my head and think about what was going and what I could do against it. The next day we rolled again, he got the same choke once on me. The next time, He got me in a rear mount and I stood up (He's about average size so it was pretty difficult but I could do it.)

At that point he told me jiujitsu is a war of attrition and I was using too much energy. And I said that he got me with that same position 4 times now. And he said "Oh so you don't want to be in that position." And from there it turned into a light "Teaching" kind of match where he was giving as much ground as he was getting.

Ad to Matakiant, What is the principles of hara? Is that something about posture or keeping your balance at all times?

I believe the "hara" refers to the one point of a person (mentally and physically) where they are perfectly balanced. Some folks refere to it as the centre of gravity in the abdomen. Thats the Aikido meaning anyway. Literally "hara" means belly in English. Matakiant can tell you for sure the intended meaning though. I don't want to speak on someone elses behalf!

I've heard of and seen Taijiquan (aka Tai Chi) masters grounding energy as they have developed deep control of their fascia and posture. Never heard of anyone in Karate doing something like that though?? Not saying it isn't possible, just never heard of it! Would be good to see a video of it.

Just to show you what I mean here is a video of a Taijiquan teacher grouding force and off-balancing folks with less developed rooting skills:

Re your problem of ending up exposing your back... what sort of "sacrafice throw" is your teacher doing on you? There are some ways to counter sacrafice throws or avoid them, depeding on the throw.

ve heard of and seen Taijiquan (aka Tai Chi) masters grounding energy as they have developed deep control of their fascia and posture. Never heard of anyone in Karate doing something like that though?? Not saying it isn't possible, just never heard of it! Would be good to see a video of it.

The same concepts exist, and are taught in some Karate. I would say it's a minority of practitioners that utilize the concepts, but there are some out there that do so and do so very well!